Welcome back. Oh
goodness, you are in for a very special episode of
the ECW report tonight. See, I viewed
tonight's episode from a slightly different setting,
other than at my house in my boxers. You can
thank me for that mental image later. Nope,
tonight WWE came to my neck of the woods, so I just
felt COMPELLED to grab me a seat at the Wachovia
Center. As such, I'm going on totally crappy
notes to jot this report down, so expect it to be
rather bite-sized in nature.

Before we get into it
though, I feel the need to talk about Raw last
night. Wow. That's all I can say about
it. Not good, not bad, just wow. OK, now
that you mention it, I CAN say more. Three
things manage to stand out to me the most about last
night. First off, WHAT WAS WITH THE CONSTANT
NEW YORK BLOWJOB!? I get that Madison Square
Garden is some super special arena and all that, but
DAMN they laid it on thick last night.
Hilariously enough, WWE forgot to take into account
that not every New Yorker is a fan of the Yankees.
I did notice some boos for them when Miz was name
dropping them as the new World Series champs.
In that vein, when Santino went through his schtick
of taking off the various New York jerseys...seems
like they didn't have much love for any of the other
sports teams either. Of course, when he got to
the Phillies, that got NUCLEAR heat from the crowd.
That wasn't too shocking, because while New Yorkers
can disagree on the team they like, they can always
agree on hating Philadelphia. Right back at
ya, fuckers. Secondly, Roddy Piper's in-ring
promo. What was he on, and where can I get
some? That whole segment was train-wreck TV at
it's finest, and I just could NOT look away. I
happened to notice he was looking at his palm a
whole lot, leading me to believe he wrote an outline
of his promo on his hand. Add in a little trip
to shootsville and I was very morbidly entertained
by this. Finally, the main event.
Basically this was a culmination of some of the
shittiest time management ever, because the match
didn't even start until 11:05! As a result, we
got a match where it looked like all the competitors
were jacked on speed. After drinking a red
bull. Total lack of rest holds, and just
BLAZING through spot after spot. Made for a
hell of an entertaining match, but I imagine those
guys were about ready to keel over as soon as they
hit the back. But yeah, I would imagine
whoever was in charge of timing on that show last
night probably had a meeting with Vince today.
Hopefully Vince whipped out his tommy gun and
emptied a clip on him, if that suit was any
indication. OK, time for our feature
presentation!

THE WRESTLING FAN INVADES
WWE: ECW IN PHILADELPHIA EDITION

(Note: This report's
going straight off my notes, so this is going to be
a little less organized than usual. Also, no
what stood outs, uppers/downers/overalls, etc.)

- Got out of work late, mainly
because I was late to work. Funny how that
works out. Have to love the good ol'
Philadelphia traffic. Apparently I was behind
nothing but people with an extreme phobia for speed,
because I was CONSTANTLY 30 MPH under the speed
limit on an interstate highway. And I looked,
there wasn't any traffic. OH NO, GENTLE CURVES
- MY ONLY WEAKNESS! BETTER SLAM ON THE BRAKES
FOR NO REASON! So, my day was off to a
rip-roaring start.

- Went directly from work to
the arena. Yes, I'm going to wave my loser
flag high and proud tonight, as I did go alone.
Wrestling's unpopular now? Surely you jest!
Luckily I got some shitty seat to go along with my
loserdom. Damn you procrastination, why must
you feel so good? From my observations, pretty
much everyone there were either snot-nosed brats
still reeling from the stretcher job put on
Hornswaggle last night, or the surly adults drinking
up because they had to bring their kids to this and
well, it's Philly. You'll find beer is the
answer to a lot of problems around these parts.

- ECW starts and they throw out
the OBVIOUS joke segment immediately - Tommy Dreamer
going to Tony Luke's to get a cheesesteak.
Sometimes, they just make it WAY too easy.
Though, if it were up to me to choose which
ridiculously Italian stereotype with likely having
mafia connections, I'd be getting my cheesesteaks
from Joey Vento over at Geno's. Quick story,
Geno's has a wall of fame full of autographed
pictures of famous visitors and all. Eagles
coach Andy Reid has no less than FIVE pictures
there. When you look at that guy, are you
shocked? Tommy Dreamer and he could be body
doubles at this point.

- Next up we get to see Zack
Ryder and Rosa Mendes coming out to have a match
with Shelton Benjamin. This sappy romance shit
is hitting critical mass at this point, but I dig it
only for its utter cheese factor. Anyway after
this long and drawn out in-ring courtship, out comes
Shelton to Jerry Springer it up a bit. He
proceeds to make Zack look like a fool in front of
his new woman (who is retarded skinny by the way),
before going ahead and turning his attentions to
Mendes. Why, I'll never know. He says
something to the effect of that Zack should leave
the ring so Shelton and Rosa can wrestle, which
isn't really that clever. I mean he might as
well just gone for the gusto and said "hey bro, I
wanna fuck your woman." Gets right to the
point. Anyway Zack responds with a cheap shot
which knocks Shelton down, and Ryder escapes the
ring with Mendes. So, no match. LAME.

- Burchill Vs. Hurricane, Mask
Vs. Career is up next. DAMN Katie is fine to
see live. Oh yeah, there was a match too.
And the match was actually really good! I get
the feeling that both guys knew it was time to
impress the higher ups, because they were pulling
out all the stops. Sadly, Hurricane got the
unsurprising win with an Eye of the hurricane off
the top rope, which was a nice finish all things
considered. They did make Paul look good, if
this was his last match. Which, likely, it
won't be. Either he'll move to Smackdown, or
he'll slap a mask on and still be on ECW. I'm
hoping for the former on that one. Paul in
non-ripper gimmicks are pretty cringe-worthy.
At least the Brits sold the defeat very well, both
looking on the verge of tears as they were sang out
of the arena.

- FILLER TIME now, as CM Punk
decides to pay General Manager Generic Blonde
Tiffany a visit (he's in the main event, and he
opened the show saying how much of a hit he'll be
with the crowd or some shit like that). Punk
complains, GMGBT tells him to lighten the hell up
(on her perma-happy mode of course). I must
note that GMGBT was looking pretty fine tonight as
well. Chicks with broken arms turn me on LIKE
NO OTHER.

- Continuing with FILLER TIME,
they show some video packages - the above mentioned
Tommy Dreamer one, but they also feel the need to
touch on that MSG package they aired last night.
BAD MOVE, WWE. That is like rule one of Philly
- DO NOT HYPE NEW YORK IN OUR PRESENCE.
Needless to say, that video package did not sit well
with the crowd one bit.

- So, how do they decide to
quell the crowd? VANCE ARCHER. Yeah,
that'll work. Quieted the crowd right into a
coma, that's for sure. Vance wins, obviously,
but his finisher is so retarded it's getting sad.
It's just a snap reverse DDT, you don't need to lift
him up in the first place if you're just putting him
in the reverse DDT position! I made sure to
let EVERYONE know that. They all cared, they
just decided to ignore me. It's how we say
hello here.

- TO THE BACK AGAIN, as Punk
and Christian meet to talk about things ECW.
Punk used to be ECW and World champ, Christian
retorts with that he still is a champ, world keeps
on spinning. Snore.

- MAIN EVENT TIME, with
Christian and R-Truth taking on CM Punk and Regal.
Truth came out last, which I find peculiar when his
partner is THE FREAKING CHAMP OF THE BRAND.
With Truth, I'm very saddened whenever he does his
rapping shtick. Remember when he had those
vignettes that were portraying him as a guy down on
his luck having to go through hard times but he was
here to change things and all that good stuff?
And how'd that turn out? He debuts as K-Kwik,
version 2. Dude is talented, I just think he
gets treated as a joke. So, two good matches
on a show? Aww WWE, you shouldn't have!
These four are pretty consistent with putting on
good matches, so why not throw them all in the ring
together? Heels pulled out the victory with a
nice hectic finish - Christian tries for the
Killswitch on Punk but Regal comes in with the
SURPRISE running knee, which leads to Punk nailing
the ECW Champ with the GTS for the victory.
Crowd was definitely into the festivities, mainly
because Christian and Punk are good with the cool
fans. I mean, you're cool, right? Only
cool people like Punk and Christian - that's all I'm
saying.

- Smackdown follows up the
show, and frankly I was a little disappointed with
it. When I was making plans to see this show,
I was assuming that this was going to be the
Smackdown that was still cutting edge, with
compelling storylines and great wrestling to support
it. Well, we still got the decent wrestling
part. Silly me, thinking WWE could keep a good
thing going. I imagine the WWE offices have an
emergency panel that says "In case of good
television, break glass," and inside is Batista.
Just saying, as soon as that guy came over to the
blue brand, things have been going pretty downhill.
Anyway, it was an OK show I suppose, nothing
special. Though, it's definitely fun to see
live, if you don't mind your ears getting raped into
oblivion. Oh wait, that's just me, parked near
a PA speaker. I refuse to spoil things, so
just go read the report on TWF when it gets there.

- Smackdown ends and I am out
of here to come home, where I write this stuff out.
I gotta say, pretty glad as a whole that I went.
The seating sucked, but I still enjoyed getting into
things with the rest of the crowd. Like how I
took up writing as an alternative way of enjoying
WWE programming, seeing it live increased the
enjoyment. For all the shit WWE gets, they are
entertaining live. But only on televised
shows. Fuck those house shows. So, if
you want to know, I give tonight a thumbs up.
Back to normal next week...thank God. My
wallet's still crying from refreshment rape.

With Christmas just around the corner, what better way to spend your few remaining dollars (left over after the seemingly infinite line-up of fucking pay-per-views ) then on the following "quality WWE merchandise!" After all, if they don't move this stuff, and fast, stockholders just might get time to figure out what "plummeting domestic buyrates" means!... and well, I don't think they need to tell you what that means! (Seriously. They're not telling you. Everything is fine! Ahem.).